


Lucrezia Borgia, Vampire Slayer

by osprey_archer



Category: Borgias - Ambiguous Fandom, The Borgias (2011)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-14
Updated: 2014-07-23
Packaged: 2018-02-08 20:57:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 8,381
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1955895
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/osprey_archer/pseuds/osprey_archer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Cesare disappears, only Lucrezia knows that he has gone to meet his vampire lover. And only Lucrezia can save him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Demon Lover

Cesare had disappeared.

Lucrezia paced her room, smoothing her hands over her nightgown. A day and a night, Cesare had been missing; he had missed a meeting of the Curia, where their holy father had needed him, and even Micheletto did not know where he had gone.

But Lucrezia knew. Cesare had gone to his vampire lover, and this time, she had not let him return.

***

Lucrezia had not been supposed to know about Cesare’s vampire lover either. Cardinals could build palace upon palace with money meant for the poor, they could raise armies and order assassinations and keep fifteen mistresses and half a dozen catamites if they liked. Some even kept books of necromancy. Secretly, true; but it was the sort of the secret all of Rome knew.

But consorting with one of the devil’s blood-sucking children - even the pope’s son could not do that with impunity.

She found out by accident one afternoon in the summer. Cesare lay with his head on her lap, as he often did when he had headaches, and Lucrezia stroked her fingers through his dark hair and tried to smooth the lines of pain from his forehead. It was a hot day, hot and dry and without breeze, and despite Lucrezia’s touch Cesare twisted his head from side to side, his face tense with pain.

His twists tugged his collar askew. Lucrezia stared at the two purple circles, dark against the skin of his throat.

She knew what they were, but she couldn’t believe it. “What is this?” Lucrezia asked, laying a single finger on the bruises.

Cesare brushed her hand away and tugged his collar back into place. “Nothing, sis.”

“Yes, it is,” Lucrezia insisted. She made to push his collar down again, but he caught her hand in a crushing grip.

“Leave it,” he said sharply, his hand so tight on hers that it pressed her rings into her skin.

“Cesare, you’re hurting me,” she snapped. She yanked his collar aside with her other hand and pressed her fingers to the fang bruises. “Cesare, you could be burned for this,” she said. “Even our holy father might not be able to stop it.”

Cesare tensed, his grip on her hand tightening so that her knuckles ground together. And then suddenly he let go and relaxed, his whole body going limp and boneless. He tilted his head back to smile at her, and he looked truly happy, which was rare. “Yes,” he agreed. His dark eyes were not quite focused.

“Indeed, he could not stop it,” Lucrezia said, the consequences growing greater and clearer before her eyes. She pushed Cesare’s head from her lap and began to pace the room. “He wouldn’t even be able to save himself. They might put him on trial again, Cesare, and how could they fail to convict when his own son was consorting with vampires? Cesare, how could you? When all the cardinals are jackals at our gate already?” She stopped, leaning on the bed to look down at him. “Why _would_ you?” she asked.

“It’s peaceful,” he said, and paused, and then leaned his head back to look up at her. He caught the end of one of her curls between his fingers. “She helps me sleep,” he said, and kissed the tip of her hair.

Lucrezia pushed him away before he could ruin her hair utterly. “I’m sure Mother knows tinctures that will help,” she said. Cesare shook his head. “Or Giulia Farnese, if you don’t want to worry Mother - ”

“Tinctures won’t help,” said Cesare. He moved restlessly. “It’s my bad conscience that keeps me awake,” he said. “So of course only a vampire can still it.”

“But she might kill you,” Lucrezia protested.

“Would you kill a goose that is still laying good eggs?” Cesare said. “And my blood is a golden egg: rich with boar and venison and spices and wine.” He breathed in deep, as if he could smell the sweet scent of his blood himself. “And all the New World foods that your Alfonso gets us from New Spain,” he said, and lightning-fast, he reached up to give her curl another playful tug. “No one else in Rome could get her a taste of that. No; she won’t kill me.”

Lucrezia pushed the errant curl behind her ear. “Where does she live?” she asked.

Cesare laughed. “A vampire? Live?”

“Where does she stay, then?” Lucrezia said. “Where do you go to her?”

Cesare frowned. He pushed himself to sit, even though the movement put a line of pain between his eyes, and looked at Lucrezia squarely. “And why should I tell you, sis?” he asked. “Do you seek sweet oblivion too? Or are you hoping to save my soul by slaying the vampire? It’s much too late for that.”

“Neither,” Lucrezia said. “I want to know where to find you if you go missing.”

“I’ll tell Micheletto.”

“Do you think I’m a fool? You’ll tell Micheletto nothing, then tell me you told him, and tell yourself your acted so to protect us.”

Cesare’s mouth twisted as he tried to hide his smile. “Don’t worry about it,” he said. “She won’t kill me.”

“Then you have a greater respect for her self-control than I do,” Lucrezia replied. “If your blood is as delicious as all that, it is only a matter of time before she overindulges.”

Cesare was silent. He traced the pattern of the brocade coverlet with one finger.

“Where would we be without your protection, Cesare?” Lucrezia asked. “Would you stake all of our lives on your vampire’s self-control?”

Cesare said nothing. He worried his lower lip with his teeth.

Lucrezia put her hand on his. “Cesare - ”

He drew away, standing and moving to the windows to look out over Rome. “Come, I’ll show you.”

Lucrezia followed him: down the stairs, down through the wine cellars, beneath the upper catacombs where cardinals kept secret passages and secret stashes and secret mistresses, until they came to a narrow corridor that might once have been a dungeon. The scent of the iron bars tinged the air, even though a layer of dust covered the place. “Why did you come here in the first place?” Lucrezia asked. “It’s miles away from anything.”

“The vampire came to me first,” Cesare said. “She comes up into the Vatican on moonless nights – even moonlight is a form of sunlight, and would burn her – but on moonless nights she walks our halls, and she...” Cesare fell silent then, pulling on a door so cunningly cut into the stone that Lucrezia hadn’t seen it. “She promised me sleep.”

Lucrezia crouched to peer through the door, but Cesare moved to block her view. “And if you go poking around down here looking for her, for any reason except finding me, I will ask our Holy Father to marry you to the king of Sweden to keep you safe and out of the way,” he told her.

Lucrezia was nettled. “If it’s so bad for me to do it, why is it all right for you?”

In the lantern-light, Cesare’s eyelashes cast bruise-like shadows on his cheeks. “I don’t know what else to do,” he said.

***

And now Cesare had disappeared.

It would not do to go down to the catacombs in her nightgown, let alone one of her own gowns - even assuming she could get dressed again without her maid’s help, and asking for her maid’s help was unthinkable. Servants talked, and you were lucky if that was the worst that they did.

Lucrezia had borrowed a suit of clothes from Alfonso against this day. But she had not thought to take one of Alfonso’s shirts. Instead she put on one of Cesare’s, the white linen soft against her skin, and still smelling faintly of him.

Then Alfonso’s clothes: black trousers, a black doublet trimmed in gold with silver frogs, black boots. The Spanish court was very fond of black.

Lucrezia had some experience with men’s clothes, but only with the getting off of them, not the getting on. Still, the froggings were easy enough, and she did not think she did too badly tying on the codpiece; and when she had wrapped one of Cesare’s belts around her waist, and taken one of Juan’s old swords, a flashy business with an extraordinary swirling hilt, she thought she looked rather dashing. Provided no one asked her to use the sword, at least. Cesare had taught her the basics, when she was a little girl and cried because she was left out of his lessons; but that was years ago.

Hopefully Cesare would be well enough to do any necessary stabbing himself.

Lucrezia swung Cesare’s dusk-colored cloak around her shoulders, buckling it securely at her throat. The night was hot, but the catacombs would be chill, and Cesare might need the warmth when she found him.

If she found him.

She _would_ find him.

The legs of the trousers seemed too tight around her legs as she crossed the room, but she could walk easily enough. She opened the door – only to come face to face with Giulia Farnese.

“Oh!” said Lucrezia, and her voice seemed piercingly high and girlish to her ears.

Giulia Farnese lifted her candle, so it shown fully on Lucrezia’s face. “Lucrezia,” she said. “I came to see that you were not sitting up fretting about Cesare…” Her voice faded as she lowered the candle to inspect Lucrezia’s clothes. “Where are you going?” she asked.

Lucrezia shook her head.

Giulia Farnese studied Lucrezia’s face, her large thoughtful eyes so penetrating that Lucrezia had to look away. She ought to be used to Giulia Farnese’s beauty, but sometimes it hit her anew.

“It’s to do with Cesare, isn’t it?”

“Of course,” Lucrezia said, because she knew her face had given her away as soon as Giulia Farnese said _Cesare_.

“If you think you know where he is, tell Micheletto,” Giulia Farnese advised.

Lucrezia shook her head. “My holy father must not know, nor anyone else. Word cannot get around.”

Giulia Farnese put her hand under Lucrezia’s chin, lifting Lucrezia’s face to the light. “Can it be so bad that it is worse than all the things that people already say about the Borgias, Lucrezia?” she asked.

Lucrezia looked Giulia Farnese in the eyes. “Yes,” she said.

Giulia Farnese inspected Lucrezia’s face. She stroked her thumb over Lucrezia’s cheek. “You are at least going to have to tell me,” Giulia Farnese said. “I’m not going to let you wander off wearing _that_ without knowing where.”

Lucrezia hesitated. But Giulia Farnese was as close to family as one could be without bearing the name of Borgia, and he had as much to lose as any of them if Cesare were disgraced and burnt for the sin of consorting with vampires. And unlike Micheletto, she would not be able to slip into the shadows and disappear.

“I’m going down to the catacombs beneath the Vatican,” Lucrezia said. “To see if I can wrest him from his vampire lover.”

Giulia Farnese closed her eyes for only a moment. When she opened them, her gaze and voice were both steady. “You’ll need a lantern. And a ball of string to lead you back from the underworld.”

“Like Theseus,” said Lucrezia. “Heading into the labyrinth.”

“Yes,” said Giulia Farnese. “Better than Orpheus, at least.”

And so they descended through the Vatican to the door in the old dungeons, each carrying a lantern, although Lucrezia didn’t light hers yet. She might need all the fuel she could save as she searched the darkness for Cesare.

There was some trick to getting the door open, and Lucrezia almost despaired. But suddenly the door swung open, squeaking; and a rush of cold air and dust rose from the stair.

The lantern light descended only three steps before the darkness pushed it back, but blurred footprints showed in the dust. Cesare had been here.

Beyond the ring of the lantern light all was darkness, a darker black than even a moonless, rainy night. Cold damp air rose out of the passage, lifting goose bumps on Lucrezia’s arms. Her grip on the lantern felt suddenly weak, and at the thought that she might somehow drop it - drop her light, and be alone in that thick blackness - her legs weakened and her throat dried.

“Well,” said Lucrezia brightly. There was only a little tremble in her voice, and her hands were almost steady as she knotted the silk thread to the inner handle of the door. “At least it will be cool down there. It has been horribly hot these last few weeks.” And she held out her lantern for Giulia Farnese to light.

“Yes,” agreed Giulia Farnese. She lit Lucrezia’s lantern from her own. “Go well, Theseus.”

“Thank you, Ariadne,” Lucrezia said. She kissed Giulia Farnese’s cheek. Then swiftly - so she did not have time to think - she descended the worn steps to find Cesare.

 


	2. The Labyrinth

Lucrezia crept down the uneven stairs into the chill damp air of the catacombs, playing out the thread behind her as she went. She wanted to shout, to call for Cesare, but that might call the vampire on her – and, if not the vampire, then whoever else might be lurking in these corridors. 

Lucrezia did not think there was any other living creature in those catacombs. The air tasted still and metallic and dead. The emptiness of the place seemed unnatural: as if the vampire threw some miasma throughout her home, which kept living creatures away, or killed them if they came. 

The darkness and silence seemed to press in on Lucrezia, as if the darkness wanted to fold the light back into the lantern as one might fold a gown into a chest. Lucrezia’s heart fluttered. She took a deep breath, but she didn’t feel like she could get enough air, as if the air were as limited as the light. 

Her heart beat faster. In the absolute silence of that place her heartbeat seemed to roar like the sea in a seashell. There was no other sound: no hawkers beyond the windows, no babes crying, no priests murmuring their prayers, no birds or even mice. Perhaps the vampire ate them all. Or the minotaur. 

Lucrezia nearly began to giggle hysterically, but she forced a deep, slow breath instead, pressing one hand against the wall and feeling the damp grittiness of the stone against her palm. There was no minotaur here, at least: Theseus had killed the only one, and perhaps she should be thankful for that. 

Lucrezia did not much like the idea of being thankful to Theseus, the Athenian prince who heartlessly abandoned Ariadne after she gave him the thread to find his way through the dark, silent labyrinth.

Yes, think about Theseus: he was always a good distraction, because he made her so indignant. Not only did he betray the girl who loved him, but his own father, too. After he killed the minotaur and sailed home for Athens, he left up the black sails on the ship which were a signal that Theseus was dead. 

Oh, the stories said it was an accident, that Theseus simply forgot to change the sails, but Lucrezia knew better. Theseus had already proved himself a two-faced sneak with Ariadne, and he must have been hoping that his heartbroken father would himself off the cliffs into the wine-dark sea, so Theseus could make himself king – 

Lucrezia’s foot slipped on the crumbled edge of a step. She nearly fell, and the force of that near fall made her stumble down the last few steps, and when she reached the flat corridor she stood gasping and waiting for her heart to slow. It wouldn’t do at all to fall and break her ankle, and lie on the rough ground waiting for the vampire, like a web-wrapped fly waiting for the spider to return. 

Of course, some of the stories said that a vampire needed permission before it could feed on a human. But savage beasts needed no permission, and why would a child of hell be less ferocious than that? 

She must remain calm. It would be too easy to let her mind run away with in the darkness, and if in a panic she dropped the lantern or the thread, it would be difficult to find her way back home - let alone to find Cesare, wherever he lay in this labyrinth.

And she must find Cesare. 

At that thought, Lucrezia began to move again. She kept her gaze within the pool of lantern light, ignoring the dark pressing in all around, and fed out her thread behind her as she walked slowly down the corridor. At least the absence of mice meant they could not snip her thread home with their sharp teeth - 

The thread. She stopped short again, her hands clenching on her lantern and her ball of thread. She had not even imagined it might break. 

Well then. Lucrezia must simply remember the turnings she took in the catacombs. It would be like remembering chess moves; and Lucrezia was very good at chess. 

In any case, she seemed to walk a long time before there were any turnings. But at last Lucrezia came to a place where her lantern light revealed two black emptinesses in the walls. 

Lucrezia’s skin prickled, looking at them, because anything might lurk in the dark. But she lifted her lantern and her chin, and turned down the left hand path. 

The walls drew inward as she walked, narrowing until her shoulders brushed against the stone and she had to turn sideways to creep along. The stone was damp and cold to the touch, and her hands and face were cold as well; but sweat dripped down her back. 

And then the passage stopped. Perhaps once it had gone somewhere, but now it ended in a stone wall. She thought she heard voices on the other side of the wall, but even when she pressed her ear against it so the damp sunk into her hair, she could not be sure. 

Lucrezia rewound her thread as she worked her way back down the narrow corridor, and gave a gasp of relief as it widened out again so that she could walk straight ahead instead of sidle. She came again to the turning, and took the right hand fork.

Her foot caught on a round pebble. It skittered away beneath her feet, and Lucrezia fell, barely saving the lantern from smashing on the floor. Small rocks clattered away from her down the hall. 

The rattle of the stones faded. For a moment there was silence, except for Lucrezia’s harsh breath. And then she heard another sound: the plink of a stone falling in water. 

She crept forward, her lantern held out before her. The light spilled reassuringly across the floor, until suddenly it didn’t: the floor was gone, and the lantern light could neither reach the bottom nor the other side of the abyss. 

Lucrezia tossed another rock into the hole, and said half a Hail Mary before it hit the water. 

Surely, Cesare knew his way around this place. Surely he had not fallen in. 

Lucrezia retreated to the turning again, and continued straight. The corridor was so quiet she seemed to hear the sound of the thread as she played it out, a soft silken hissing. 

Sometimes Lucrezia tugged the thread, gently, gently, to make sure that it was still taut; and she counted out her turnings in her mind, just in case it broke. 

There were not very many turnings to count. Always, the side corridors seemed to end in rockfalls or stone walls, until Lucrezia thought, The vampire has shut herself in. She left one door into her lair – an entrance for fat cardinals and plump priests – and closed out the coarser meat that might stumble in from the city’s catacombs. 

Lucrezia came to a fork in the hall: a stairwell to the left, and the corridor leading straight on to the right. She hesitated a moment, shining her lantern down each choice; and then a glitter near the curve of the stairs caught her eye, and so she followed them down. 

As she rounded the curve her breath caught in her throat, not from fear but from delight. Walls and ceiling, the staircase was encased in shards of glass and polished metal, which caught her lantern light and reflected it back, so she might have been standing in a glade dappled with sunlight through the leaves. 

Had the vampire done this? Perhaps she missed the sun. 

Perhaps, after all, Lucrezia could see why Cesare would come down here. 

It was then that her lantern began to gutter.

She stopped on the stairs, her fingers suddenly sweaty on the lantern ring, watching the flame falter and then, flutteringly, wax again to its full brightness. Her heart pounded in her ears. She ought to go back. She could not go back, not yet. Until the lantern went out, she would search; and then she could follow her thread back through the darkness. 

Suddenly, abruptly, her lantern flared and then fluttered out entirely. 

Lucrezia stood in the utter dark and silence, her fingers clenched so tightly that the silken thread that led homeward cut into her skin. Her eyes strained and strained at the darkness, trying to adjust, but even a cat’s eyes could not have seen in that blackness. 

Except she did, or thought she did. Ahead, in the blackness, she saw a light. 

It was barely a glimmer, perhaps only a trick of the eyes; and she really ought to go back, replenish her oil, and return with her own light. But she could no more move away from that glow than a moth could turn its back on the lantern flames, and slowly, slowly, skimming her feet over the flagstones, she went toward the light. 

It grew stronger as Lucrezia drew nearer, until it was bright enough that there could be no doubt it was a real light, for by its light Lucrezia could see the walls of the catacombs. It threw long shadows from the uneven stones in the walls; it limned the outline of an arched door.

A vampire wouldn’t need a light, surely? Surely the devil’s creatures could see in the dark. 

And it was hard to imagine a vampire sitting in the warm golden glow of candlelight. No. It must be for a human.

It must be Cesare’s light. 

Lucrezia crept forward, her ears aching from the strain of trying to hear. But if there was anyone on the other side of the door, they were as quiet as the nonexistent mice. 

Lucrezia crept forward, ever so slowly, so her feet made no sound on the stones. It was not another hallway on the other side of the door, but a room: a rather small room, because the candlelight seemed to reach all its walls. But small as the room was, its ceiling vaulted up, and looking at it gave Lucrezia a strange sick feeling. If the ceiling could be as high as all that, they must be deeper underground than she had thought. 

The candlelight did not reach the ceiling itself, but only the tips of the dripping icicles of rock that hung down from it. The darkness swallowed their rocks’ roots, so they seemed to hang from nothing, and looked perilously close to falling

But there were no fallen rocks on the floor – and what a floor it was. The carpeting of dust was not quite thick enough to hide the mosaic beneath it. Why, the room might go back to ancient Rome. Her father would be fascinated. 

But Lucrezia forgot that as she moved forward a few more paces, because then she saw the bed. It had no hangings, only great drifts of cobweb grown almost as heavy as curtains with the weight of years and dust; and they were thick enough that at first Lucrezia did not see him. 

But the three-branched candelabra outlined a silhouette against the drifting cobweb curtains on the bed. Lucrezia knew Cesare’s nose better than her own. 

She did not cry out. She took the last few steps forward, so she could see fully into the room, and saw that no one else was there. Then, with halting step, she crossed the mosaic floor to the bed. “Cesare!” she cried, and thrust aside the cobweb curtains. A shower of dust fell, and Lucrezia began to cough. 

The dust lighted on Cesare’s lashes, light as ashes or frost. It fell on his nose and his lips. But Cesare did not stir.


	3. Deals with the Devil

Lucrezia Borgia was the daughter of the pope, a woman who had faced down the King of France and saved Rome; and she did not cry out at the sight of her brother’s unmoving body. But her eyes brimmed over, tears blurring Cesare into a ghost - and at the thought, the tears came faster. She flung herself on the velvet coverlet, kneeling beside him and lifting his hand to her lips to kiss it again and again. 

His hand was not waxy and cool with death, but warm. She held it pressed to her lips for a moment, slowly allowing herself to hope, and then pressed her fingers hard into his wrist to feel for a pulse. At first she could not feel his heartbeat, and her heart plummeted in her chest. But his wrist was as warm as his hand, and as she held onto it she found the pulse: too faint, too slow, but still beating. 

“Cesare!” Lucrezia cried, and threw herself forward to kiss his lips. 

He did not waken. She patted his cheek, hard enough almost to be a slap, and when that didn’t work, she took his chin between thumb and forefinger and shook his face. “Cesare, you must wake up,” she said. “We have to leave this place. Cesare – ” What if he could not wake? It would almost have been better to find him already dead than to have to watch his heart slow and die. “Cesare!” she cried, and slapped him. 

His eyelids flickered. Lucrezia gave a sob of relief. Cesare’s eyes opened, large and dark and heavy-lidded with sleep. He blinked up at her. “Lucrezia,” he murmured, a smile touching his lips, and tried to raise his hand to touch her face.

“Cesare,” she said. She took up his big hand between both of hers and lifted it to her cheek. His fingertips stroked across her skin. “Come along, brother. We have to leave.” 

He smiled up at her sleepily. “Lucrezia,” he said again, and this time the name seemed to penetrate his fogged mind. “Lucrezia! Why are you here?” he asked, drawing his hand away.

“To save you,” Lucrezia said. 

His eyes widened. “Don’t be a fool,” he said. “Get out before she descends, Lucrezia, and leave me to my deal with the devil.”

“Oh? I am to leave you here to die, then?” Lucrezia said, keeping her voice light and teasing, although it was hard to speak lightly in the face of his grayish pallor. 

“She won’t…” Cesare began. But at Lucrezia’s arched brows, his voice faded. He swallowed, cleared his throat, and attempted to sound authoritative as he said, “Leave.” 

“Certainly,” Lucrezia said. “I’ll leave as soon as you come with me. It’s as simple as that.” 

Cesare scowled. He tried to push her away, but he was as weak as a kitten, and she caught his hand and kissed it again. “Come on, Cesare,” she coaxed. “You have to come back home. Who else will protect us when you’re gone?” She stroked his hand, looking into his eyes until he jerked his head away like he couldn’t bear her gaze. 

“Micheletto will look after you,” he said. “He’ll do a better job of it than I have. You won’t be following him into any vampire’s lairs.”

Lucrezia took his chin in her hand and turned him to look at her again. “Do you think I care about that? Micheletto won’t be able to protect me from the thing I fear most – because that thing is losing you.”

Cesare looked at her, lips parted. Lucrezia gave his chin a little shake, stroking her free hand through his hair. “So you have to come away with me. Please, Cesare. I will drag you through the catacombs if I have to.”

“You may have to,” he admitted. “I am…not sure I can walk.” 

Lucrezia wasn’t even certain he could sit up, but he looked embarrassed enough by his first admission of weakness, so she said nothing on that score. His arms shook with the strain as he levered himself to sit. Suddenly his face lost what little color it had so he looked as lead-white as a vampire’s victim in a masque, and Lucrezia hastily plumped the dusty bolsters so he could collapse against them in a position that was at least a little like sitting. He began to cough on the dust. 

“It’s all right,” Lucrezia assured him. 

But his gaze shifted over her shoulder. “Run,” he barked out between coughs, and sat up sharply, only to fall back again with a gasp. The dust rose from the pillows like a fog. 

“Cesare – ”

“Don’t argue, damn you! Go!” He pushed at her, and Lucrezia did slide off the bed: not to leave, but to grab the heavy candelabra, because it seemed a better weapon than a slender sword she did not know how to use. 

The vampire hung in midair, spiderlike, her pale draperies and paler skin almost glowing as she descended into the candlelight. 

Only unlike a spider, she did not descend on a thread, but floated downward like a feather on the air. And she did look at light as a feather, with her long white hair hanging loose and tangled as a Magdalene’s around her papery face, and her skin stretched over her bones as if there was no muscle underneath. Her eyes were so deep-sunk in shadows that Lucrezia could not see them. But although she looked like a desiccated corpse, her lips and cheeks were red as blood. 

“Lucrezia, leave,” said Cesare. “Go back to the light, Lucrezia, _please_.” 

Lucrezia wished for her skirts, which would have hidden the shaking about her knees far more admirably than Alfonso’s borrowed trousers. But there was no help for that now. She moved a few steps toward the vampire, candelabra clenched in her sweaty hand, then stopped at the foot of the bed with one hand on the bedpost for support. 

The vampire drifted downward, slowly, slowly: she moved as if she had all the time in the world, and of course she did. But at last the vampire came to rest a few inches above the floor. She looked at Lucrezia, running her eyes over her until Lucrezia felt a blush burning in her cheeks. 

Vampires did not breathe, and yet the vampire let out a noise that was almost a sigh at the sight of Lucrezia’s hot blood in her cheeks. “So,” the vampire said. If the catacomb had not been so silent Lucrezia could not have heard her, because her voice had no resonance. “You are the little sister.”

The vampire spoke Latin, not Italian; and it was not the Latin of the church, which Lucrezia knew, but a version that sounded strangely in her ears. Perhaps it was the Latin of Satan’s disciples. 

But Lucrezia understood well enough. Perhaps the Borgias were closer to Hell than she liked to admit. “I’ve come here to save him,” Lucrezia said, lifting her chin. “Leave him be.” 

The vampire let out a strange coughing noise. “You?” she said. “Well. And why should I do that?” 

“Because - look at him,” said Lucrezia. “You’ve half-killed him already. Surely his blood is as thin and weak as watered wine now.”

“All your kind walk with a foot in the grave,” the vampire said, and each word came from her slowly, slowly. “Since the time of the Emperor Tiberius I have lived. What is one more of your mayfly lives to me?” 

Lucrezia glanced behind her, eyes catching on Cesare. He glared back at her, as if he could will her to leave with his eyes alone. “I don’t care what it is to you,” Lucrezia said. “He means a great deal to me.” 

“So,” murmured the vampire. “I should give it to you out of altruism, then?” 

“Do you think I’m a fool?” Lucrezia retorted. Then, quietly, in the hopes that Cesare could not hear, she whispered, “We’ll make a trade.” 

The vampire drifted closer. Lucrezia’s suitors sometimes flattered her that she walked so lightly it was as if she stepped on air, but for the vampire this would have been no flattery, but only simple truth. Except she did not walk: her feet never moved. She simply moved across the room, slow and smooth and stately as a swan. “What is it you can offer me in return?” the vampire asked, and her tongue, red as pomegranates, flickered over her lips.

“Let me – ” Lucrezia began. She could hear her heartbeat roaring in her skull, and perhaps the vampire heard it too, or smelled it; because for a moment the points of her two sharp teeth her visible, bright in the light from the candelabra. Lucrezia tilted back her head, exposing her white throat, and the vampire drifted closer, closer. Lucrezia saw that the vampire’s eyes were not deep-sunk in her skull, after all. The vampire had no eyes, only hollows in her face, although through some deviltry she could still see. 

Lucrezia’s voice trembled. But this time she finished her sentence, though her voice came out more loudly than she would have liked. “Let me come to you instead. My blood is richer than his.” 

“Lucrezia!” Cesare protested. 

Eyes or no eyes, the vampire turned toward him with the same deliberate slowness that she did everything; and in that moment Lucrezia struck. 

She did not swing the candelabra back for a blow, but stabbed like a Roman soldier stabbing a gladius. Even then, she was almost not fast enough. The vampire screamed with rage as the candle flame licked her hair. One bony arm lashed out, the fingers digging into Lucrezia’s arm: not the nails, but finger bones filed to points as sharp as a falcon’s beak. Lucrezia screamed. The air filled with the smell of blood and burning feathers, and Lucrezia did not drop the candelabra.

The vampire’s dry hair caught like paper. The vampire licked Lucrezia’s blood off her finger bones. Her blank eye sockets turned on Lucrezia, disbelieving. She gave that strange cough again, and Lucrezia realized the cough was a laugh. Her scarlet lips shaped a word; but then the fire caught on the vampire’s papery skin, and the vampire became a column of flame.

Lucrezia thrust herself away from the vampire. Small flames licked on her sleeves, and she beat at them with her good hand, although the wet blood in the fabric stopped their spread. The candelabra fell to the floor between them with a crash.

Then suddenly all was darkness, except for the blotch on Lucrezia’s vision that was an echo of the flames. Her burnt and bleeding arm throbbed with each heartbeat. There was a little clatter as the skeleton, held together by nothing now, fell to the ground. The room smelled of burning feathers and Lucrezia’s blood. 

The silent darkness pressed in on Lucrezia so that it seemed that she was all alone in a vast sea of nothing – and that there was nothing in the world but that nothingness and the pain of her arm, and all the rest of her life had been a dream. 

“Cesare?” said Lucrezia, and her voice sounded high and small to her, like a child’s voice after a nightmare. 

“Sis,” he said, and she let out a breath that was part sob and part laugh, because she was so glad to know that he was still there. 

She moved toward his voice, stepping even more slowly than she had as she walked through the catacombs, her good hand outstretched to find the bed. Her wrist banged awkwardly on the bedpost, and it hurt; but it was something to hold onto in the darkness. 

“Speak to me, Cesare,” Lucrezia said.

“I’m right here, sis.” 

She climbed back onto the bed and crawled across the coverlet. “I don’t suppose killing her gave you back all your health and vigor?” she asked.

“Afraid not,” Cesare said, and there was a bit of a laugh in his voice. 

Her fingers caught on his doublet. She walked her fingers upward across the ties, and he gave a little breathless laugh as if it tickled. The skin of his neck was warm enough her fingers. She let herself run her hand over his face: the divot in his chin, the slight bump in his nose the lines of his eyebrows. His breath was warm on her wrist. 

“Your arm,” he said. He lifted his hand to her wrist near his face, then ran his hand up her good arm. His fingers moved over her face. He tapped her nose lightly, then traced his hand down her injured arm to feel the wounds. Lucrezia sucked in her breath. “Lucrezia – ”

“It is not bad,” Lucrezia said. “If it does not get infected…”

She swallowed. Stab wounds, even such little ones as these, so often got infected.

“Mother will know what to do,” Cesare said firmly. “Once we get back to the surface.” He intertwined their fingers, giving her good hand a gentle squeeze. “Let’s go home.”


	4. Back to the Light

But leaving the catacombs was not as easy a matter as walking out. Lucrezia had to help Cesare sit up, and even that small movement made his breathing painfully loud in the darkness. 

“Wait here,” Lucrezia said, and eased herself off the bed. “I need to fetch the string.”

“The string?” said Cesare.

Lucrezia moved toward the place where the door ought to be, her uninjured arm held out in front of her to feel for the wall. “Like Theseus used when he walked into the Labyrinth to defeat the Minotaur.” Her fingertips brushed the stone. Lucrezia moved her fingers along the wall until suddenly they slipped into the empty space that was the doorway. 

Good. Her thread must be somewhere across the threshold. She dropped to her knees, groping along the stones with her fingertips. The dark pressed in against her, and at the corners of her eyes should seemed to see strange amorphous shapes; but when she turned her head, there was nothing there. “I’ve always thought that the ancient Greeks must have been rather dull people not to think of a thread earlier,” Lucrezia said. 

“Probably the Cretans wouldn’t let them into the labyrinth carrying skeins of yarn,” Cesare replied. 

Her fingertips slid against the string. She gathered it into her hand, and crossed back toward the sound of Cesare’s breath. “Very likely,” she agreed. “But they had their tunics so they could have – ow!” She had barked her shin against the bed in the dark. “Can you stand? Let me put my arm about you.” 

Cesare leaned heavily on her shoulder, so much so that Lucrezia nearly fell under his weight. But she planted her feet apart and gritted her teeth, and held him. 

“Can you walk?” she asked, and hoped that her voice didn’t betray the strain too badly. 

“Yes,” he said, though his voice sounded as tight as hers. 

“Then step,” said Lucrezia; and they began to hobble forward. 

Lucrezia’s whole body ached from the strain of supporting Cesare, and her blood beat so hard in her ears that it seemed almost that she could hear voices – voices to match the spectral shapes at the edges of her vision in the darkness. Cesare’s harsh breath was loud and harsh in her ear. 

“The Athenians – could have – unraveled their tunics,” Lucrezia said, speaking in bursts of breath as they walked. “To mark – the labyrinth path.” 

She paused, but Cesare did not answer. Probably he didn’t have breath. But her voice distracted her from the darkness, so she continued, “But then – they still wouldn’t have – a weapon to kill – the Minotaur. And I doubt he – kept candles – ” Her toe slammed into an obstacle. She nearly fell. “Ow!” 

Her loss of balance overset Cesare. For a moment he wobbled, and then all his weight fell on Lucrezia, and he toppled forward so swiftly that she didn’t have time to soften his fall. Something made a hideous noise against the staircase.

“Cesare!” Lucrezia said. 

He didn’t answer. She felt for him in the darkness, her fingers lighting on his shoulder. “Cesare,” Lucrezia said again, and gave his shoulder a shake. 

His body moved limply as she shook him. But then some tension came back into his muscles. He swiped irritably at her hand, as if at a fly, and Lucrezia laughed with relief. 

“I fell down,” said Cesare. He sounded baffled.

“I walked into the stairs,” Lucrezia said. “She must have taken a good deal of blood,” Lucrezia said. “And you have had nothing to eat or drink since you have disappeared. You fainted…”

For a moment Lucrezia almost despaired. Cesare could barely shuffle along a smooth passageway, and she did not see how he could climb stairs. 

Somehow Cesare caught her thought in the darkness. He said, “Leave me here.”

“ _Cesare_ ,” Lucrezia said, annoyed. “Anyone would think you _want_ to die here, you’re so eager to have me gone.”

“I don’t want to die here. But I would rather do it alone if I have to,” Cesare said. 

“Well,” said Lucrezia, “You don’t have to. If you can’t walk up the stairs, I’ll carry you. We are Borgias, and Borgias don’t give up.”

“But – ”

“And you are going to help,” Lucrezia said, “by being _quiet_.”

He made a sound that might have been a laugh, and Lucrezia took heart. 

She hooked her arms under his armpits, and hauled him up the first stair. And the second. And the third; and again, and again, and again, bracing her feet against the stair and dragging him up yet another step. 

At last she reached the last step. Her arms trembled with weakness. She propped Cesare against the wall and sat, and tried not to think about the other flight of stairs to climb to the door into the cellar. 

And the cellar was still many, many staircases below the light and air. 

But once they were out of the catacomb, then she could fetch help. She could fetch the Vatican guards – well, perhaps she ought to change into proper clothing first – well; she would decide when they came to it. 

She wondered if the dawn had arrived to the world above. How much time had passed? Time seemed to stretch and splinter in the darkness. 

The spectral shapes swirled in her peripheral vision again. Mere illusions, or real things usually hidden by the light? 

Lucrezia she took her rosary in her hand, just in case, and focused on the feel of the smooth beads beneath her fingertips, and closed her eyes to whisper her prayers. 

She calmed. Some of the strength returned to her limbs. Then, in the darkness, Cesare’s voice: “I see a light.” 

Lucrezia opened her eyes. Yes: in the distance, she saw a glow. She stood, awkwardly drawing her sword; and making her voice as deep as she could, she called, “Who is there?”

“Lucrezia?” a voice returned. 

“Giulia Farnese!” Lucrezia cried, and the light grew suddenly brighter, as if Giulia Farnese had opened the shade of the lantern fully. The light turned the bend in the passage, and there was not only Giulia Farnese but Lucrezia’s mother, and in the blessed light of their lantern, Lucrezia’s white silk thread homeward became a glowing line of gold. 

“Is Cesare well?” Vanozza asked, hurrying forward. 

“Not well; but alive,” Lucrezia said, and Cesare lifted a hand to greet them. 

Vanozza kissed Lucrezia’s hand that still held Juan’s sword. “My daughter,” she said, and kissed Lucrezia’s forehead; and then she bent down to touch Cesare’s face. “My foolish son.” 

“Mother,” Cesare said.

Giulia Farnese reached them, lantern held high. The light caught on the glass and polished metal discs in the walls, so shards of light reflected like the sparks of festival fireworks; and in the soft and dappled light, Giulia Farnese and Vanozza and even Cesare, ill as he was, looked blessed.

Giulia Farnese went to Lucrezia, lifting her arm to inspect the blood spattered on the white wrist of her shirt. Her slender fingers turned Lucrezia’s arm, and her large eyes did not miss the way Lucrezia bit her lip at the movement. 

Giulia Farnese held out the lantern to Lucrezia. “Light our way,” Giulia Farnese said. “We will carry Cesare.”

“But – ” Lucrezia protested. 

But Vanozza had already crouched to wrap one of Cesare’s arms around her shoulders, and Giulia Farnese knelt at his other side, and they lifted him between them. And so Lucrezia took the lantern, and held it high, and led them out of the darkness of the catacombs. 

***

In the garden of Vanozza’s palace, Cesare lay in the shade, looking upward to watch the branches rustling in the breeze. It was a few days since his return from the catacombs, and he was, if not quite well, at least far better in body than he had been. 

But a depression seemed to have settled on his spirits. His eyebrows drew low over his eyes, and his mouth set in a frown as he watched the play of sunlight and leaves. 

Lucrezia watched him for some time before she went to him, spreading her silk skirts around her as she settled in the grass with a bowl of grapes in her lap. “Do you miss her so much, then?” she asked. 

He tilted his head back and opened his mouth for a grape. She popped one in his mouth. He chewed, spit the seeds into the grass, and said, “No.” 

“Do you miss the peace she gave you, then?” Lucrezia asked. 

Cesare toyed at the grass. “No,” he said again. His fingers moved more restlessly among the stems. “Yes,” he said. “But that’s not what…”

He fell silent. Lucrezia waited. A breeze ruffled the leaves above them, so the light glanced for a moment full in Cesare’s face. He lifted his arm to shield his eyes, and at last spoke. “I put you in danger,” he said. 

Lucrezia thought about what to say. She ate a grape, and spit the seeds into the rosebushes, and at last said, “After all the times you’ve protected me, why shouldn’t I protect you this once?”

“That’s not how it’s supposed to be,” Cesare said stubbornly. 

“Well, I daresay della Rovere will invent another dastardly plot to kill us all soon enough, and you can restore the right order of things by saving us all again,” Lucrezia said. 

She spoke lightly. But Cesare’s brow darkened more. “You could have been killed in the catacombs,” he told her. “I can’t bear the thought that my…” He seemed to search for a word. “My selfishness, in taking a vampire lover, would cause your death.”

Lucrezia put the bowl of grapes aside so she could lay Cesare’s head in her lap. “Cesare,” she said, smoothing back his hair so she could force him to look up at her. “You are the least selfish person I know. Could I claim half as much devotion to our family? Everything you do, you do for all of us.” 

Cesare turned his face away. “Not everything,” he said darkly, and tore at the grass.

Lucrezia tugged lightly on his hair again, and unwillingly he looked up at her. “But even that was for the family,” she said. “You went to her because she gave you rest, so you would be strong and well enough to protect us. How were you to know that she would nearly kill you in the end?”

“You warned me,” Cesare pointed out. 

“As if the indestructible Cesare Borgia has ever taken a warning as anything but a challenge,” Lucrezia said. He smiled, but only with his mouth, and his eyes remained troubled and far away. Lucrezia bowed her head, trying to think of something that would comfort him, and Cesare twined the end of one her curls around his finger. “Well,” said Lucrezia. “So maybe you were a little selfish. And why should you not be? The rest of us are.”

“But if della Rovere – or Caterina Sforza – or any of our enemies had attacked when I was lying ill in the catacombs…”

“You can’t blame yourself for things that could have happened,” Lucrezia said. “Because they did _not_ happen, by the grace of God, and if you make yourself sick thinking about it, how will you protect us when Caterina Sforza does try to attack? The past is gone. Look to the future.” 

At last Cesare’s eyes cleared. “You’re right,” he said. “I need to prepare…” 

He made to get up: to practice swordplay, to review the Papal armies, to attend the College of Cardinals, to do any of the thousand and one things he did for the Borgias. 

“Not so fast,” Lucrezia said, and pressed a hand against his shoulder. Cesare was no longer so weak that a mere hand could keep him from rising, but he acquiesced, and relaxed again into her lap. “No one is battering at the gates. You’re going to let us return you to your full strength.” 

She took another grape between her finger and thumb. Cesare smiled, and then, as if indulging her, opened his mouth for the grape. 

“And if you have trouble sleeping again in the future,” Lucrezia added, popping the grape in his mouth, “you must come to me for aid.”

Cesare chewed and spit out the grape seeds. “And what will you do?” he asked. 

“I don’t know,” Lucrezia said. She plucked another grape from the bowl. “Whatever you need.”

He nipped her fingers as he took the grape from her hand. “I’ll hold you to that.”

“It’s a promise,” Lucrezia replied.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to motetus for the gorgeous picture!


End file.
